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Surviving in Melitopol and Berdiansk, a “big prison” under Russian occupation

2023-03-05T10:44:45.627Z


Moscow imposes the ruble, its police, its education, its propaganda, its ballot boxes, its censorship and its administration on Ukrainian citizens waiting for the day of liberation


Oksana, 52, continues to live in her apartment in Berdyansk, in southern Ukraine, despite the Russian occupation she has suffered for a year.

She ties her mother, Lina, 83, who cannot be evacuated out of this city on the Azov Sea in the Zaporizhia region.

She accepts with resignation the price that she has to pay daily.

She maintains her hope that one of these days, who knows when, this population, which before the war had some 110,000 inhabitants, has now been reduced by half or less, according to those responsible for it in exile, will be liberated.

The situation is similar for those who hold out in Melitópo, another occupied city in the same region.

Both are located in an essential land corridor for Moscow to be able to keep the Crimean peninsula and Donbas connected, also invaded areas.

Break that hallway,

which also passes through the crucial Mariupol, is the primary objective of the Ukrainian army.

But, what is the day-to-day life like for the Ukrainians living under the Russian yoke in those towns outside the combat zones?

As for many others, Oksana's life has turned upside down, she acknowledges during a telephone interview with EL PAÍS.

He has lost his job as a chemical engineer, because he has refused to accept the Russian passport and to collaborate with the authority that holds power.

Also, her invasion keeps her away from her two children and her husband, Oleksii.

The man buried her mother in July and in September she had to move to Zaporizhia, the regional capital, which is still in the hands of kyiv, so as not to lose her job in the customs administration.

Oksana's main occupations now are caring for Lina and getting food, which she has to pay for in rubles.

Surrounded by collaborators

This woman does not deny that she lives surrounded by collaborators or employees who come from the puppet authority in Moscow, but that new administration has not been able, for example, to manage the collection of public services such as electricity, gas or water, which He hasn't paid for months.

They try to spread their tentacles by handing over Russian passports, paying pensions of 10,000 rubles (about 125 euros) to the elderly and the disabled, forcing the acquisition of cards with telephone numbers from that country or imposing their means of communication and propaganda.

It also imposes its digital censorship, which many citizens have learned to circumvent using, for example, VPN tools that bypass the blocking of web pages or applications.

The only daily expenses that Okasna faces, apart from Lina's food and medicine, are the internet connection, which comes from the occupied Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, and the community payments for the building where she lives.

Nor does the woman deny that there is part of the population that agrees with the imperialist plans of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

This forces him to limit her contacts and the topics of her conversations as much as possible.

“I know it is very difficult to make them change their minds.

We cannot trust them and what consequences it may have for us to talk, ”she warns.

Still, she believes life is "safer" in cities than in rural areas, where individual houses allow Russians closer control of citizens.

Fear of reprisals, like the rest of those interviewed by telephone for this report, led this woman to ask that her real name not be published.

Despite everything, her life goes by with hardly any contact with the Russian security forces.

The military have their bases on the outskirts of Berdyansk and police officers are in charge of patrolling the streets more frequently and carrying out searches or questioning suspected collaborators with Kiev.

The resistance has already managed to plant some car bombs that have cost the lives of some responsible for the pro-Russian power network.

However, in these months, Oksana has only had to face a control by the occupation forces, it was last July to go to the cemetery, for the burial of his mother-in-law.

A Russian soldier guarded the area of ​​an explosion against a local television, at the end of October in Melitopol. STRINGER (AFP)

Meanwhile, Kiev continues to pay pensions like Lina's, of 5,000 hryvnas a month (about 130 euros), enough for the expenses faced by her and her daughter, which amount to 3,000 or 4,000 hryvnas per month.

The Ukrainian government is also trying to keep civil servants' salaries up to date despite difficulties facing a banking system floating in limbo.

Amid these difficulties for those living under occupation, Health Minister Viktor Liashko insisted last summer on national television that Ukraine does not consider the health workers who maintain their posts in hospitals and health centers to be pro-Russian collaborators. .

The warning is not free,

The shortage of medicines, as explained by some of the interviewees, is being faced with the arrival of Russian generics.

Cleaning and hygiene products have become especially expensive, says Oksana.

And diapers and other basic baby items are almost luxury items, says Iryna, 28, who managed to escape Berdiansk in September with her four-year-old son and other family members.

"The occupation ruined my life" and the city was "a huge prison," explains this woman who had to leave her two jobs, that of a journalist for a radio station and that of an administrator in a company.

In the local market, fresh food from local producers alternates with what is imported by the pro-Russian authorities.

Of course, since January 1, these have become stricter in imposing the use of the ruble as currency.

The only remedy left to citizens is to resort to an unofficial currency exchange system that works in the eyes of all.

“I transfer an amount of grivnas to that clandestine exchange point and there they give it to me in rubles,” explains Oksana, who can no longer use her Ukrainian card to pay.

The official exchange indicates that one grivna is equivalent to two rubles, but, according to the testimonies collected, at these points they get 1.5 rubles for each grivna.

Iryna says that the surcharges to make the currency exchange were up to 20% and that in the first weeks of occupation, large queues formed in front of the banking entities to withdraw cash.

“I got to have turn 621″, she adds.

She perfectly remembers the day they managed to escape from Berdyansk because it was their wedding anniversary, by then the Russians had already imposed their education system and controlled even the kindergartens.

She assures that they even reward those who continue to bring their children with money, in an attempt to normalize life under the new authority.

In this sense, she recalls the arrival of some families, identified by their Russian-speaking accents, from abroad to settle in with the new officials or agents who arrived from the invading country.

It is true that Russia did not manage to conquer kyiv in three days, as they were proud of a year ago.

But it is also true that the majority of the inhabitants of the areas of Ukraine that fell under the clutches of his troops those days never thought that the liberation would cost - and take - so much.

Ukraine has carried out two major offensives in recent months to recapture parts of the Kharkov and Kherson regions, but tens of thousands of people still remain under Russian control.

For this reason, many of those who considered stoically enduring the occupation have gradually been escaping from the prolonged Russian presence and the need to continue working to maintain income or, in the case of men, flee the enlistment that Moscow wants to impose. in their ranks the Ukrainians.

This has happened to Oleksii, Oksana's husband.

He now lives in a room in Zaporizhia that they have given him as an internally displaced person, but he refuses to put down roots outside of Berdyansk, admits one of her children, Sasha, who has come to visit him from Kiev.

“I hadn't even bought plates and cutlery to eat.

I had to take them with me, ”he points out to explain that the only thought that goes around her father's head is to return home as soon as he can.

The impossible evacuation of Grandma Lina will keep the family apart for now.

“I can't leave her here, she depends on me.

That is why many of us have chosen to stay”, argues Oksana.

This is just one case among thousands of families divided by the prolonged occupation and the need to survive.

Frequently, the women stay in the occupied area in charge of the elders.

Young people and men make the leap to the area controlled by kyiv.

Putin organized illegal annexation referendums in September in the Ukrainian regions of Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, which he partially occupies.

"I am one of those who did not open the door of the house when they came to vote," says Okasana.

The result of the electoral pantomime, of overwhelming support for Putin's theses, has not received recognition from any international body.

These four regions together with the Crimean peninsula, which Russia has occupied since 2014, account for 22.5% of Ukraine's 603,000 square kilometers.

A strategic victory for Moscow

The enclaves in which some of those interviewed in this report live represent one of Moscow's strategic victories in this war.

The southern cities of Melitopol, Berdiansk and Mariupol make up a corridor that Russia has managed to open up and keep under its control during the current invasion.

Its usefulness at the moment is to keep connected territories of Ukraine that the Kremlin already occupied in 2014, such as the Crimean peninsula and the troubled area of ​​Donbas.

This corridor, located between the Donetsk region and the Zaporizhia region, is one of the next objectives set by the local army and whose battlefield can decide the future of the conflict.

Melitopol, just over 100 kilometers from Crimea, is the critical point, especially since an attack in October destroyed part of the bridge that connects that peninsula with Russia.

In that city, essential for the land corridor of the Russian occupation, some 150,000 people lived a year ago, of which between 50,000 and 60,000 now remain, according to its mayor in exile, Ivan Fedorov.

The new authority increases its presence at a logistical and human level these days in the face of a possible Ukrainian counteroffensive, warned the mayor in an appearance last Wednesday.

Fedorov assures that it is increasingly difficult to survive and receive aid without accepting the Russian passport and that, at the same time, this safe-conduct is what opens the door for citizens to move between cities and, therefore, to escape to the area under control of Kiev.

Alert,

online

in Ukrainian of their children while they go to school under the Russian system.

As for the elections, there is already a Moscow electoral commission and members and supporters of Russian parties such as United Russia or the Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), already spreading their tentacles across occupied Zaporizhia.

Some citizens voted in the illegal referendum on the Russian annexation of the Zaporizhia province, in September in Melitopol.ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO (REUTERS)

“Sometimes I followed the Russian news and they made you doubt.

I turned off the TV as soon as those doubts arose,” says Andri, 33, who fled Melitopol in July and now works as a shop assistant in Kiev.

“Psychologically, it was very hard to stay there.

You feel like you are constantly under control, that you are being persecuted.”

However, he remembers with a laugh one of the attacks from the Ukrainian side that the city suffered, specifically the one on June 12, which coincided with Russia's National Day.

He was playing soccer and the explosions were greeted with shouts of “

Slava Ukraini!

” (Long live Ukraine!).

Andri points out that, after attacks like this or the one carried out last March against the airport, used as a base for the invading troops, one knows "by the faces of the people in the street who is pro-Russian and who is not."

“In Berdyansk there is nothing left of Ukraine anymore except the population that remains.

There are no flags, no radio, no institutions… ”, Iryna deplores from her new residence in kyiv.

Oksana, who remains there inside her with her mother, Lina, sums up the crossroads she lives at: “I have a double feeling.

On the one hand, I represent my family in the place where we have our roots.

We await victory and liberation.

But, other times, we feel depressed because we see ourselves defenseless, unprotected and survival is not easy”.

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Source: elparis

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